Tolerance cannot be measured in terms of degrees of intolerance. I am essentially opposed to burning books even when they incite others to violence. But freedom is either an absolute or it is conditioned on not inciting others to violence. Anything else is rationalized bigotry.

Search This Blog

Friday, November 29, 2013

Incitement Faith and Peace

If competence
were the only per-requisite for negotiators then peace would also be achieved
through unsolicited concessions and generosity of spirit. But that would be
naive. If we do not acknowledge history then we build up the false expectations
of one side or the other that history can be repeated. Nations negotiate for
advantage, not for any altruistic reason.Nations build up prejudices over centuries at the expense of the
disenfranchised; they exploit weakness to disempower their victim.If the weak become strong, any atrocities committed
in the past are inevitably revenged, creating a new dynamic for conflict and
“historical” grievance.Disequilibrium
does not result from inequality but from a shift in relative advantage.

Until they
gained self-determination, Jews were a persecuted minority in the Muslim world.That damaging asymmetrical relationship was
the currency of mostly Arab rule from the time that the mythical figure of
Mohammad appeared on the scene in the 6th Century CE (or AD) and
until Israel’s
liberation in 1948.Firstly let me
explain that last statement.

Religious
figures of the magnitude of an Abraham, Jesus or Mohammed are objects of faith
– None of them can be proven to have existed.That is why we call it faith. If we accept their existence by virtue of
the writings of the men who followed them it does not automatically follow that
we must also accept the theological mandate, or diktat that men of faith have demanded.That is Islam (submission); it is not Judaism.Our heroes were never infallible. To accept
without questioning all of the religious literature written mostly by men assumes
a universal altruism which does not exist in the historical record. Fallibility
does not make faith any less important to people’s lives but it does mean that
we do, ALL OF US, have a choice. That choice is whether we accept what others
write about us in order to impose upon us a label or whether we allow the other
their faith, but choose to disagree with the relevance to us of their theology
or writings.

If some of those
writings are offensive then we must also decide how we are going to interact
with both the script and those people who adhere to its message.At the same time, our response must not make
us insensitive to the feelings of either our friends, or out enemies. Jewish
fear and past history has made many Jews narrow-minded and fearful of
criticism. Taking every slight as a new call for our ethnic cleansing does not
help to explain our fears and causes us to appear as if we care for only one
issue.

This is our
problem and more so for Jews than for Christians and Muslims. For while the
Church recognises that some of what has been written over the centuries by
Christian theologians was toxic by design and murderous by intent, the Shoah
encouraged a reappraisal by many but not all Christians of past narratives and
the relationships that they created.

Islam though, has
never been forced either by circumstances or by religious necessity to confront
the original sin of its creation, its blood lust, and its ongoing narrative
contempt for all non-Muslim infidel nations.

The Muslim
triumvirate of holy writings are the Koran (the word of Mohammed), the Sunna
(the body of traditional Islamic law based on the life of Mohammed), and the
Hadith (the account of things said by Mohammed and his followers which is the
canonical basis for Islamic Law.)The
most canonical Hadith is Sahih al-Bukhari. It is said to be 98 per cent violent
jihad.To many Muslims it is the most
important book after the Koran.

The Koran
ridicules the non-Muslim and while there are said to be many contradictory
passages within it, the doctrine of abrogation enables followers to pick and
choose; to behave with casual disdain or with violent assault.Earlier passages in the Koran are more
tolerant, probably because they refer to a period when alliances were necessary
in order for the faithful to grow in strength and gain control. Later texts are
much less tolerant; Mohammad and his conquistadors were powerful enough to
repudiate earlier treaties of amity and to assail their competitors.

The tragic
reality is that while reciprocity is the key ingredient to tolerance in
society, it is wholly absent from countries in which Muslims form the majority
and in countries where they are the minority it is the reason multiculturalism
has failed.Demands that we respect the
Islamic right to preach hatred and to behave with bigotry are unsurprisingly
accompanied by expectations of protection that are often in excess of any thing
offered to the targets of that hatred.

A very small
selection of statements by Muslim leaders follows:

Jews are “the scum of the human race, the rats
of the world….and the offspring of apes and pigs” Abdul Rahman al-Sudais, imam
at the Masjid al-Haram mosque in Mecca.The Sacred Mosque or The Grand Mosque is the
largest mosque in the world and surrounds the Kaaba.al-Sudais has a global audience.

Israeli leaders “cannot be called humans, they
are like animals….Israel is the sinister, unclean rabid dog of the region.”
Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

“Against us stood the most intelligent people
on earth….we succeeded in compelling the Jews to do what we wanted … and what
have we given them in return? A piece of paper!....we have established
sophisticated machinery to control and limit to the minimum contacts with the
Jews. President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. (Ephraim Dowek,
Israeli-Egyptian Relations 1980-2000 (London:
Cass, 2001) Also, see below.)

“Over the decades he (Mubarak) reduced
interaction with Israel to the minimum level, he fostered a culture of virulent
antisemitism in Egypt, turning his country into the world’s most prolific
producer of antisemitic ideas and attitudes.“ (Palestine Betrayed. Ephraim Karsh)

Islam’s 'friends'
say that these are no more than the extreme views of radical fringe groups.
They are not. They are the views of the political and religious leadership of
the Muslim world.These quotations aren’t
insane rants of incoherent gibberish nor do they emanate from the orifice of
some clinically delusional nut. University professors as well as world leaders
believe in the writings of a mythic 6th Century warlord whose lust
for power rapidly built a political force that today threatens to dominate the
globe.

If Muslims
scream hatred from the political and religious pulpit then peace is not
possible, except as a sham.

The USA,
desperate to keep Russia from re-establishing its influence in Egypt turned a
blind eye to the unadulterated poison pulsing through the veins of the Arab
world’s most influential nations (Egypt and Saudi Arabia) just as it now does
so, with Iran, Turkey; the Palestinian Authority and Gaza.Short sightedness fosters greater long term
regional instability because it makes nations bereft of trust and insecurity is
never a formula for international peace.

I am reminded of
the threat of a previous era. During the peace protests of the 1960’s a
favoured mantra of the anti-nuclear lobby was the strategic estimate that nine
nuclear weapons were all the Soviet Union needed to destroy the UK. The USSR had deployed 50 missiles against mainland Britain. The
language used by Israel’s
enemies against her and against Jews worldwide precludes nothing.If
words are bombs the greater Muslim world is its premier nuclear power.

The terrible
rhetoric of Israel’s enemies
has its Islamic foundation in the deserts of Saudi Arabia 1,400 years ago. The US President and his political followers here in
Europe expect Israel
to trust in them when they have not EVERbeen minded to sanction those for whom this primeval bigotry is just
business as usual. This grotesque tolerance follows naturally on from an
extreme form of individualism that accepts elemental chauvinism as a right for
others to display, and more frighteningly, as a right of others, to act upon their
beliefs, without interference.

Throughout its
history Trojan Horses have taken many forms. ‘Religion of Peace’ is one of the
memes used by Islam and its western apologists. Most of the Near-East was
created by Britain and France after
the First World War. In 1920, the San Remo Conference created a legal basis for
carving up the defunct Ottoman Empire into
artificial states. Those states were always dysfunctional and they could only
ever be ruled by force of arms.Read again the words of hate.If containment contributed to the fall of
Communism, why then, do we actively prop up hate saturated Muslim nations?

Perhaps the main
issue is this: the greater Israel’s
insecurity becomes, the more difficult it is to negotiate, let alone promote a
two state solution. Is it in the interest of the USA
and others to ignore incitement from the Muslim side and to subsequently blame Israel for its
intransigence?There are financial penalties for doing what
is right, and huge financial benefits to embracing Hitler’s Muslim predecessors.